Conventional multiplication hardware in, for example, a solid state device can have a size limitation, for example, a specified number of bits that can be handled at one time by the hardware. Typically, multiplication hardware is defined as having a pair of single-word operand inputs and a two-word result output. To carry out multiply-accumulate operations, the multiplier output can be connected to an accumulator, which typically is at least two-words plus one-bit wide. The supplemental bit can be part of the result, or simply be present as carry information indicating either an overflow in the case of addition, or an underflow in the case of subtraction, in the accumulate part of the operation.
In cryptography and other applications, there is a need to multiply very large integers including a large number of words. In order to perform these operations using operands that are much wider than the multiplication hardware, the operands can be sliced into one-word wide segments and fed into the hardware in some specified sequence. The segments are operated upon and the intermediate results are accumulated such that the final product is computed as a sum of cross-products of various weights. The word-wide operand segments as well as the partial results, are stored in a memory that is addressed by the multiplier hardware's operations sequencer. For example, a sequence can keep a first operand's segment constant while the operand's segments are scanned one word at a time into the multiplier, then the first operand increments to the next word-wide segment and the scan of the second operand is repeated.